


Snow's End

by TKodami



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel's True Form, Fairy Tale Elements, Hurt/Comfort, Icy Setting, M/M, Mark of Cain, Pre-Slash, Season 9, Season 9 AU, Team Free Will, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami/pseuds/TKodami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt - TFW investigate a case somewhere freezing cold and snowy, and Dean is injured. Sam goes to find help, and they take shelter in an abandoned building. But there's a snowstorm raging outside, and they don't know what else is out there...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow's End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anactoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/gifts).



> This story borrows elements from The Snow Queen and The Little Matchstick Girl (and at times borrows style & voice from fairy tales). The fic is set during an unspecified time in Season 9 after Meta Fiction. In this universe, Castiel never attempted to remove Gadreel’s grace from Sam during the Mark of Cain arc.
> 
> Thank you to my beta [MollyC](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC) for last minute story help! This is my first SPN fanfic.

When we have already blundered into the trap, we know the weight of our errors in judgment, Sam thought tiredly as he scrubbed his arms against the freezing stone of the portal. He couldn't touch it with his hands. No skin contact until he was sure; he remembered that much. Magic sparked weakly and washed over the surface of the rock in a slow, blue wave. The altar shuddered, groaned sharply, and went silent.

Passage For Souls in Service of the Dead, it now read.

Sam jerked his arm back unconsciously.

Not the right one. Not ever the right one.

Bitter cold trickled into his heart. His shoulders hunched involuntarily, trying to curl around his chest. He ran his fingers through his hair, as much for something to do with them as to warm them. _Why was he here?_ Dean was injured; and he was on a mission. _What was this place?_ An answer wormed its way into his mind, then dashed off before he could grasp it; at one time he had known the name of this featureless plain, but it had left him on the wind. 

A grimace twisted on his face. If he didn't find the right portal soon, he'd have plenty of time to figure it out--an eternity, an ocean of time, before he froze to death on the tundra.

Wherever he was, he had to keep moving.

~*~

Castiel sat cross-legged on the ground and watched the snowbank grow larger and larger at the far end of the creaking hovel. Snow twisted through the patchwork thatch roof and fell over the muted shape of a bedroom. 

The rate of snowfall was constant. He calculated the time it would take to bury the small structure completely, accounting for drift and wind velocity. The answer (it should have happened 0.3 hours ago, and again in another 1.2 hours) did not cheer him. He let out a disapproving grunt when, at the hour mark, the snow reversed itself and tumbled upwards. Flake by flake, it puffed out through the ceiling thatch and into the howling white gale. As the snow cleared, it revealed for the third time the meager contents of the cabin’s single room: bed, dresser, small rag rug, and a cracked hand mirror.

Each time, Castiel expected something. To see something else. Something new. Something useful. Something that would... Castiel wondered bitterly if this was an effect of fading grace: expecting the impossible. 

Castiel sighed and nudged grace to the surface of his vessel. He had been monitoring the cabin’s small perimeter since their arrival; despite angelic knowledge telling him the area was empty, experience had taught Castiel, in Winchester parlance, not to hold his breath. Invisible strands of grace surrounded their meager shelter. Carefully, he inspected each of them for disturbances. Aside from Sam, nothing had touched them. Even the snow fell around the strands rather than through them.

Still, Castiel felt a well-earned caution. Another pulse of intent sent new orders: expand the perimeter, monitor environmental changes, map position in relation to last known location.

Dean groaned and, with a tentative shuffle, rolled up against his side. Castiel stilled. 

_I wonder if he can feel that?_ Castiel thought distantly, as he pulsed the last orders to their makeshift security web.

Dean's lips pulled tight, and exhaled a contented puff against his dress slacks. A warmth tickled Castiel's throat. He straightened, and dropped his attention down to his charge. Dean's eyes were squeezed shut, somewhere in the twilight of sleep/not-sleep.

 _Contentment?_ Castiel berated himself. It was the sleep of a man who had been stabbed (with what Castiel hoped was _not_ a weapon of Heaven--they tended to be nasty, unpredictable, and beyond his meager healing abilities), patched up, and forced to run for his life, again.

Like a man chasing after the perfect position on his makeshift pillow, Dean rested his head against Cas's leg for a few heartbeats, then snorted, turned, and burrowed his face into Cas' thigh. He sunk into the only point of heat in the room. Gently, so gently, Dean nuzzled Cas’ thigh.

Castiel grunted in surprise and slipped his control. The burning core of his angelic form pulsed outward through his skin. Grace spilled into the room around them; white flecks of light fell across Dean’s sleeping face.

Dean relaxed.

For a moment. 

A wind burst whipped a cold eddy across the dresser. Dean’s eyes flew open, and his hand jerked up to brush the melting snow from his face. A little o of surprise passed his lips. “Was that uh--” 

Castiel reined the grace back in and snapped his human form shut over his core. “I was--monitoring the perimeter.”

Dean shuffled back against the wall until they were shoulder-to-shoulder. This was safer, familiar. Like the endless days they had spent in Purgatory, after the river bank but before Castiel had broken their easy fellowship with a thrown-off grip and a command ( “Dean, Go.”). 

“--don’t have to move--”

“Thanks man, but--” 

“I could--”

“I got this.”

 _Pain makes you seek odd comfort,_ Castiel’s mind said. 

_Whose pain,_ he had snapped back, in a human voice that sounded awfully like Sam. 

~*~

When the last flakes had uncovered room, it hung in the air. The effect was startling: the bed at the center, the dresser waiting in the wings, the cracked mirror dutifully reflecting everything it saw. It was an achingly domestic scene. Emptiness. Loss. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. And then physics reasserted themselves in a place where they had no meaning.

The snow continued to fall, constant and unrelenting.

~*~

It was another cycle of falling and lifting before Dean said, so quiet it could have been him thinking loudly, "have you felt Sammy in a while?"

Castiel took in a breath, and exerted his angelic will. Time crystallized. As he breathed out, a puff of grace etched each snowflake with a white glow. 

He nudged through the walls of the cabin, out into the still landscape. Everything was drained of color; there was no horizon, only a fading out of sight. On the ground, the snow muffled the roar of the wind to a dull whistle. Not even properly snow (there was no water in this place to freeze), merely a substance that stole away heat and dribbled down their backs on contact. Nothing lived here. Nothing could.

Castiel shaped the grace into a small, wingless messenger bird. It fought with him weakly, before it gave in and allowed itself to change; this grace was not used to being shaped, and it radiated a quiet resentment at being constrained in mortal form. 

Its clawed feet dug into the snow and tested out its unfamiliar limbs. It trilled waves of recognition and friendship. Buried in the message was a gentle command, _Report Soldier,_ one that surprised him. Castiel had not taken to the language of Heaven since his Fall; but somehow it felt _right_ in the cold absence of this realm. 

Was that a remnant of Theo? or was it Castiel’s own thought? 

He quieted the grace. 

He waited. 

No vibration returned. 

As an angel, he knew all of Creation simultaneously. With enough human experience, he had learned how to render this knowledge in linear experience; working cases with the Winchesters had required him to learn to do this with unerring clarity. Even if language ultimately failed to convey the vastness and the changelessness of the _angel crap_ he was asked to explain, Castiel was learning a fondness for metaphor (sometimes he even joked). 

In this case, Castiel knew Sam’s silence was _like_ the silence of the dead--but metaphor was not the same as meaning, and he ruthlessly quashed that thought.

He pressed on. Alien shapes twisted around this borrowed grace, refusing him easy passage, cloaking everything in a static white. 

_Reveal Friend._

The landscape was shrouded, unresponsive to the query. 

As Castiel built a new language with references, and jokes, and experience (provided by the Winchesters and Metatron’s little update patch), the shocking discovery was that the angelic mandate to know had become an overwhelming need to feel. He needed both to understand. He was his human vessel; he was also a celestial wavelength. What he _wasn’t_ , was the power that tethered them together. Unfamiliar grace welded one to the other. Merely existing became a balancing act over a chary abyss. 

Currently, he knew the only way he could not sense Sam’s soul was that it didn’t exist. But he could feel the sharp edge of limitation to his angelic sight. This place was inimical to angelic nature; it was outside of knowledge; and experience didn’t give him much to go on either. This was a between-place. A service corridor. 

Something unformed--until thought gave it the desire to have form. 

There was intent here. That much he was certain. So as he went, he gently tread across the snow. 

Sam’s trail started near the cabin and moved away from it. Old footprints. A stone leaking magic. And another one, yards away. An endless stretch of stone altars, many of them soaked with Sam's warm but fading presence.

The grace eddied into a counterforce and spun out. He slammed into a wall of faded color.

Castiel's consciousness snapped back into room, driven back into his body like whiplash. He ground his teeth, hard, and tried not to let the strain show in his body. Dean's hand spasmed in the fabric of the tan trench coat; Dean caught his eyes and held them. 

"No Sam," he said.

Even said quietly, his voice sounded too raw and too piercing for the room.

"You tell me the minute he's back."

"Of course, Dean."

~*~

Flakes of snow caught on Dean's short fair hair, which of the snowflakes that fell, never moved an inch and did not melt; but of this, Castiel had stopped thinking. Hours ago they had shifted towards the dresser. It was furthest from the drifting snow. They had huddled together, shoulder-to-shoulder, as soon as they had moved. 

But this time Dean had pressed more firmly into Castiel's side, and Castiel angled his body and all of its heat towards Dean.

 _Any source of warmth is welcome in a storm,_ his mind helpfully supplied.

His fingers brushed over the back of Dean’s hand, and he parsed the inflowing data. Normal temperature (for someone freezing to death), no lingering infecting agents in the serum (of what little blood is left), wound cauterization achieved by uneven application of angelic healing (the best he could do without compromising vessel integrity). 

Stable. 

His fingers lingered on Dean’s skin, Dean’s breathing hitched. Castiel’s echoed imperceptibly. A tight string of expectation pulled across his being.

Waiting. 

This place was alive with waiting.

What was it waiting for?

~*~

It had been six snow cycles since Sam had set out to find a portal back to a Created realm. Earth, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Anything: Castiel had tried to press the importance of this point on Sam. Any realm with the trace of Creation would allow him to find a way back to the bunker, even without his wings. 

Most angels did not know how to do this. (By sheer luck of never having fought their way back between realms with molting wings, desperate to find a single, friendly point in time and space. For once Castiel was grateful for that wild, desperate flight back to the Winchesters from 1979.) He knew from experience that: wings were a mode of transport, but not the only one; other _things_ crossed the higher planes that one could grapple onto if one was desperate enough; once an angel was in an etheric plane, navigation could be accomplished not through flying but by falling; falling meant positioning yourself precisely in relation to your destination, and then completely letting go.

All they needed was the portal. Once activated, Castiel could push them through the walls of the transport into the ether, and they could fall back to Earth (United States, Kansas, Lebanon, the bunker) within a relatively certain period of time. No more than a week before or after they departed. 

Sam _needed_ to find the portal. Dean could not be treated in this realm. 

Castiel sent out a small push of grace and at the same moment his eyes flitted across the dresser. His gaze fell on the rusting hand mirror. His eyes took in the details of the tarnished, silver handle, the rough crawling filigree--as though he hadn’t quite seen it before (hadn’t it been cracked?). 

Grace itched where it touched his skin. A portal to a Created realm was the key, he was sure of it. He shook head, and turned away.

~*~

It had been three snow cycles since Castiel had seen Dean's injuries. Castiel sufficed himself with system checks through skin-to-skin contact. The accidental brush of fingers against Dean's wrist, forehead, or back of his hand were, he decided, much more pleasant than Dean's (clearly false) reports of "fine," "peachy," and "quit fucking asking."

The data flow (heart rate: slightly elevated, oxygenation of the blood: 96% and holding) was reassuring, but something nagged in the back of Castiel's mind.

In the time since Sam had left, Dean's silences grew. His commentary on survival films and inter-realm transit became strained. Castiel could not fight down a new sense gnawing at his edges. This sense was, he decided, alarm. Time was running out.

"It is time for a 'visual check', as you call it."

Dean shuddered and didn't even bitch about the cold. He waved a lazy hand at Castiel, as though the progress of his health was as interesting as discussing the weather (snow, forever, what's the point).

Upgrade that to _panic._ "Let me see it."

"Fine, Herr Docktor," Dean said, cracking a small, fake smile.

Making the effort to snark, probably to reassure Cas. It worked. His panic dialed back a few notches. Cas shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around Dean's slumped shoulders.

"Hey, woah, no. Not with your frozen mitts," Dean said.

Cas exhaled another puff of grace onto his hands to warm them (he wondered faintly if he had the grace to spare; if this, or the next use, would be the moment when it fizzled out, and then it would just be Dean and Sam fighting for a path home. But he dismissed these thoughts. They were as useful as that tight string of expectation in his chest.), then gently inched three layers of Winchester clothing up Dean's side.

The wound. It was suppurating a bluish-green discharge that glowed faintly. Purple lines threaded through the skin. Whatever it was, it was spreading. Or moving. Castiel traced the lines as far as he could see them. They disappeared underneath the flannel, and he could not sense their path.

Castiel carefully raised his eyes to Dean.

"How do you feel?" He asked, tongue thick, and his words slurring with emotion. "Do not use 'fine' in your answer." 

With a tilt of his head, Cas directed Dean's gaze down to his own side. Dean's eyes did not widen when they took in the angry purple wound. His face remained so schooled and calm... Castiel felt a surge of anger. So he could _feel_ it. So he had _known_.

The system checks. Useless. Whatever the Mark of Cain had done to Dean's body, however this realm had affected Castiel's ability to see--everything had been made alien to him.

In the grim set of Dean’s shoulders and the open, pleading look that had slid onto his friend’s face, Castiel read the story of Dean’s emotions, and wished fervently Dean would say something, anything to erase them. 

Everything's-peachy / Please-don't-worry-about-it / We-three-will-be-enough / Everything’s-fine / I'm-probably-dying / We’ll-make-it / Even-if-it-kills-us / Because-we-have-no-other-choice / Dying-is-easy / Too-many-times-to-be-surprised-by-it-now /  
Don’t-let-go

Castiel dropped his hand with a quiet cry. It was too much. 

~*~

“Cas, Cas--” Dean’s voice was soft, insistent. It brought him back to himself. Dean had pulled the layers back over his side during Castiel’s momentary lapse of attention. The wound was covered, but the wrongness of it still throbbed in Castiel’s mind. 

Castiel looked Dean full in the face. 

Dean’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. His face was alive for the first time since they had stumbled through a rip in the world into this place. A question was forming between Dean’s brow. 

“Dean, what is it?”

“Does silver rust?”

~*~

In his bones (or their angelic equivalent of waveform curvature), Castiel _knew_ this room was meant to appear thoroughly human, a part of Creation that he--and his current grace--had been formed to understand. 

But at the same time, it was not _Created_. The cabin was the suggestion of form that had been given to it when Castiel and the Winchesters had breached this realm. The Winchesters had expected a cabin in the middle of inhospitable white-out plain, and so: there was a cabin. Fleeing from an ambush of angels loyal to Metatron did not slow Sam and Cas down (Dean slung between their shoulders) until they stumbled into the outer wall.

Whatever was outside, surrounding them, was the opposite of human. 

How was this realm to know that silver could not rust?

As the two of them gazed at it, the rust melted into the pure metal tones of polished silver. Its handle took on a flawless sheen. The rough filigree on its surface took on a tapering, delicate quality and gleamed as though it had caught a shaft of impossible light. 

Dean took in a small breath. Castiel stood and gripped the mirror. 

They seated themselves down by the foot of the bed and huddled together, this time facing each other. Dean’s feet had drawn close up to him. Castiel could tell Dean grew colder and colder. They needed to go home, even if they would certainly take blows from traveling without wings, and to a home that began to take on the memories of being cold too (though Castiel imagined that this was only the work of the mind trying to understand Uncreation), for above them they had only the uneven thatch roof, through whose large cracks whistled the wind, the snow, and the misery of this place.

Dean’s fingers curled up in a small grabby motion. Castiel affirmed the mirror posed no (sensible) danger, and passed it to Dean. 

“What do you see?” Castiel asked.

“Nothing,” Dean said. “It doesn’t reflect--Oh, whatdya know. Heh.”

“What do you see,” Castiel asked, sure that the answer had changed.

“Myself,” he said brokenly. 

Dean handed the mirror back to Castiel. He peered into the surface. At first, it showed nothing. Solid, opaque, with shadow lines criss-crossing through the glass as though it was reflecting nothing back at itself. 

But then the surface clouded, and cleared: Castiel saw the room behind him in startling detail, in dripping colors that did not exist in the room itself. A giant talon held the mirror at its base (one possible representation of his arm), the talon of a falcon. He angled the mirror up so that it caught the reflection of his face. Nothing human looked back at him. 

Castiel saw clicking, whirring metal plates that slid over and around the blinding core of his center. He saw a star in his chest. He saw its fading edges. He saw the giant patches that had already cooled to dark spots. Gases lept and arched around each other. 

All at once, everything was bathed in red. Blood ran down the reflection, sticking to his plates, his core, his grace. 

The light inside Castiel sputtered and died. 

Everything. (Grinning back at him.) Choked in blood.

Castiel lowered the mirror and looked at Dean.

“The mirror lies,” he said as firmly as he could.

“It ain’t lies if you know it’s the truth,” Dean said.

~*~

Dean’s hands were almost numbed with cold. Castiel opened his palms. Before he could clasp them again, Dean had wedged his hands right between his own. Castiel closed them around Dean’s and thought of the comfort that he might provide. He had already given up his coat and his suit jacket (what little warmth they could give); they were pressed as close as Dean would allow (he was tucked close to Castiel's side); the warmth that his exhaled grace provided had dwindled down to minutes.

The core of his grace might provide a hearth, and heat, but he couldn’t let the light go out. He couldn’t leave Dean here alone. 

But he couldn’t watch _this_ anymore, and he was willing to risk much.

Castiel slid one of his hands up to Dean’s face, and gently clapped it against his eyes. 

“Do you trust me?” He asked simply.

Like he had years ago in the angelic green room, hamburger slapped out of Dean’s hand, Castiel had just asked him two implicit questions ( _Do you trust me? Do you trust me more than Heaven?_ ). As it was then, so it was now. All nervousness and raw belief, Dean swallowed, and nodded once. 

Dean pursed his lips. And Castiel saw in his expression the look of a man he had Fallen for.

Before Dean could get out the follow-up question that he was clearly forming ( _To do what exactly?_ ), Castiel _pulled_ , and _pushed_ and _manifested_. 

Manifesting had been simpler when the grace was his own. Castiel could no longer shift his trueform from the ether. This much he had learned in the alley behind the warehouse where Theo had tortured him. He had slipped the guards, barrelled into the street, and called to his wings. Every angel cast from Heaven had had their wings burned away to stumps. But thanks to Metatron, Castiel had descended as a human; his wings had been protected, locked inside of his human form. His were safe. And whole. And his, again. What did he do with this great gift? He had shredded them as they screamed out of his body, broken, bloody, disjointed. 

_What hadn’t he known?_ What he couldn’t have known until experience taught it: to exist in the same plane / same time with another’s grace, his vessel had to fuse with his angelic form. 

Sweat beaded on his brow. The borrowed grace fought against the blasphemy but Castiel quashed it without further thought. The skin on his back hardened and peeled away from his body in jagged pieces. His skin became the sliding inner plates around his core. The plates unfurled like wings ( _maybe they could steer and brake when he was falling through the ether,_ he thought curiously), and wrapped around the tableaux of him and Dean huddled face-to-face. 

Castiel felt his ribs crack and curl inward like flower petals. He gasped as pain ripped through his mind like a buzzsaw. Dean struggled against his hand, but Castiel’s grip was firm. Pinpricks of blood peppered his breath. He shivered under the strain. Human bodies clearly weren’t meant to rip open their chests, he thought mildly, then went rigid as he opened a small portal to his angelic core. 

The air warmed instantly. Dean once again went slack in the sudden exhale of heat, but his body still twitched and shuddered minutely from the middle stages of hypothermia. 

A steady, softly pulsing light fell across their faces. Castiel’s light should be constant, unchanging. But now it beat like a human heart, in time with his hard breathing.

“Better?” he asked, between breaths. 

“Warmer,” Dean said. “Cas--should I even ask?”

“No,” Castiel agreed. 

~*~

Grace leaked from his chest: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, the wall became transparent like a window, so Castiel could see the snowy plain and its stone tables stretching into a white void. His hand was tight across Dean’s eyes. The touch was grounding. Even as his life leaked out of his chest, he felt the answering warmth of blood returning to Dean’s face. 

For his part, Dean had even stopped struggling against Castiel’s hand. Instead he brought one of his hands up to cover Cas’ and held it there, fingers threaded together as they waited.

~*~

It had been ten snow cycles since Sam had left, seven since the last visual check of Dean’s wounds, two since Castiel had decided ripping open his chest was the most reasonable solution to hypothermia. 

He tried to hold all of the facts of their situation in his mind; but even his angelic memory (with the latest pop culture update) had begun to fail. Castiel felt his lips crack in the blistering cold. He went over for the hundredth time The List: fled from Metatron’s forces; fell through tear in the world; Dean injured (how had he been injured?); Metatron bad; Sam searching for portal; controlled fall into Creation; return Winchesters to Men of Letters Bunker; Save Dean; nowhere other than the bunker; Dean injured (wound spreading?); hole in chest a-okay. 

Castiel uneasily noted that he could no longer attach these events to any kind of sense-memory. He had no memory of fleeing, no memory of the tear that brought them here. Only a memory of telling himself the story of how they arrived in this falling-down cabin with the growing and diminishing snow drift. 

More worryingly, Castiel had no sense of Dean: was he improving? stable? declining? He felt nothing but the warmth of Dean’s breath against his hand, the rise and fall of his chest, the thrum of blood under his fingertips. 

Castiel arms should not tire, but they tired. His elbow drooped, and his hand slid off Dean’s face. 

Dean trusted him. 

He did not open his eyes. 

~*~

Thousands of lights were burning behind Castiel’s eyes. They festooned green branches, trees with arms as high as Heaven, and as deep as Hell--the great bridging paths between Creation. Castiel has seen these lights once before from such a height. It was on his Creation day, when he had been Named and Known in Heaven as on Earth. These were the waypoint lights. Points of grace that marked the boundaries of Creation and the winding trails through the uncreated wilderness. 

Castiel stretched out his hands towards them. 

But the lights rose higher and higher, and he saw them now as the eyes of Heaven. One fell down and long, streaking tail of fire burned across the sky. It fell through a portal. In his heart, rang the words: Passage For Souls in Service of the Dead.

Funny. 

Had Castiel ever had a soul?

~*~

“Cas, hey. Hey. Cas. Wake up.” 

Castiel opened his eyes to find his head resting against the frozen wall, Dean’s face hovering over his. Dean’s eyes were still shut, but his mouth was pulled into a small, tight frown.

“I do not sleep.” Castiel’s mucus-crusted voice said otherwise, but he shoved that traitorous observation down as far as he could.

“You were talkin’ in your sleep,” Dean said. “Passage For Souls In Service of the Dead?”

Even without his eyes open, Dean’s expression brooked no objection. So Castiel didn’t even bother.

“A path I once saw, on my day of Naming. It runs the length and breadth of the world. Dean--I think we----might be--”

Dean’s thin laugh caught him out. Castiel’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. 

“What a joke. If we are----why am I still--” he touched his side where the blood would be crusting underneath his flannels. “And why are you--” Dean’s hand found its way to his forehead where sweat, heat, and salt formed an ugly crust on his skin. “Does that make any sense?”

“I think I’ve been here before,” Castiel offered in reply when none of his other facts marshall to his defense. 

And at that, Dean’s eyes flew open. His breath caught in his throat and he choked. “We’re in _angel heaven_?” 

~*~

Castiel’s suspicion seemed to be confirmed when Dean’s eyes do not boil out of his head at the sight of his grace. _Why would they, if we are already dead?_

Cas rebelled at the thought. He grabbed Dean’s nearest limb--a leg--and felt the steady pulse through the denim. 

But it was fair money as to whether or not Dean was actually breathing; his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Trying to start words, and completely failing. Cas faltered, and dropped his gaze. His cheeks heated. With a growing horror, a thought flitted through Castiel’s mind. Is he _embarrassed?_ Embarrassed to be seen like this? Neither human nor angel, but some blasphemous combination of the two? 

Truly, it must be quite a sight. The giant metal plates that are both a part of him, and not, slicing through the air around them, rotating through a spherical plane through the ground and over their heads. Shards splintering from Castiel’s chest where his trueform had fused with his vessel’s skin. Torn-out holes in his suit and his button-up. A shining, beating heart visible through his bent ribs. Grace spattered across his face. His eyes burning with celestial intent as he held the fused body together with the force of angelic will. 

“Hey Cas, buddy,” Dean started. He touched Castiel’s shoulder tentatively. Cas looked up at Dean. “Um, you’ve got something on your--there--” Dean made a large circular motion with his hands, meaning _all of him._

Something bubbled up in his chest. Laughter, he thought vaguely. 

That’s when it hit him, right between his ribs. No, he’s pretty sure he was embarrassed because it’s Dean. Dean. Alive Dean. Joking As Easily As Breathing Dean. Who was bleeding the most unusual colors, purple and red and blue: heaven and earth and hell. Human and demon and angel--oh. _Oh._

Castiel rolled his eyes, beseeching an empty heaven that he was right. Let them simply be between worlds. Let them not be dead. Let them be in the wilderness around the lighted paths. Let them find their way home. He finished his prayer and drew his arms against his core, where it warmed his hands with an inner light. In the glow, he imagined, and then formed an angel blade, and pulled it from the void with a quiet _snckt_. There sat Dean so radiant and alive, so _alive_ with bewildered awe.

“Do you trust me,” Castiel asked again.

“These days, pretty much always,” Dean said, simple and true.

With a heavy swing, the angel blade scythed through the air. The apology flew from his lips--“Forgive me if I’m wrong”--as Castiel buried the blade in Dean’s side.

Dean smiled weakly. “Hey buddy, you do what you have to.” 

~*~

Castiel couldn’t give _it_ any chance to react. But the moment the blade slipped into Dean’s wound, the Mark roared like it was dying. 

What a joke, Castiel thought. He was saving Dean (and the Mark). 

Curses peeled from Dean’s lips like a promise. It would kill Castiel. It would have his bones on the spits of Hell. The Mark of Cain snapped at him through Dean’s mouth, and Castiel felt a trickle of fear. 

(He could be wrong.)

Dean grabbed the mirror and smashed it against the side of Castiel’s head. The pieces glittered like tiny jewels in the fierce light of Castiel’s grace and fell to the snow, burning and evaporating the powder where they touched. The wind blew a piece from the falling glass, and it cut right into Castiel’s open heart. The world spun, and changed before his eyes.

All at once: Castiel saw bees swarming over Dean’s face, now cankered by demonic blight; Dean swung the mirror again towards Castiel’s open grace; Castiel formed his hand into a killing blade and swung for Dean’s neck. 

The glass blanketed his senses.

He couldn’t feel anything through the numbing white. In his mind, Castiel _knew_ it was one of those splinters of glass from silver mirror--and as Castiel looked at Dean, it turned into a lump of ice. The pain of his leaking grace had stopped, the tight line of expectation had faded, and all there was, was the glass and his winding-down heart. 

_No_ , Castiel screamed. _No!_

Dean landed first. His blow glanced off a shifting plate, and struck Castiel off-center. He doubled over and fought to understand the shock that radiated through his mind ( _years ago, that would have broken his hand,_ Castiel thought. _Years ago, it did_ ). Castiel’s arc went wide, and sliced at the air over Dean’s head. 

There was a moment where Castiel knew he had the advantage. Dean wore a smirk at his successful hit, and was shifting his stance for a killing blow (He is used to fighting monsters in the dark, Castiel thought). He could cut downward with a force strong enough to shatter bone ( _I am not a monster_ ). But he paused to think ( _Why do I need to think? I am a good soldier_ ). A memory stole to the surface. The first time he had seen Dean’s demonic face, cruelly distorted, blighted, his mind had sung out _enemy, enemy, enemy_. But he had stayed his hand, because he had crawled through the bowels of Lies to save this scarred face. How was now any different? He was still a good soldier; his command was to obey; the only command he could find buried under the white noise was _Save Dean._

He dropped his arm to Dean’s shoulder--no weight, no intent, in his movement--and suffused the spot he touched with the little grace he had left.

The piece of mirror slid from his heart, puffing up steam where it hit the snow.

As Dean shifted into a new stance to buck off Castiel’s hand, he moved his hand to Dean's throat--then around to the back of Dean's neck--and held his charge in a bruising grip. Castiel looked into eyes that flashed with violence. He knew what it meant to obey. He willed Dean to understand the plan, to fight back against the anger drowning everything that was human. 

Castiel also thought: _I might like to kiss him._

He filed that thought away. Not too deeply. Not for too long.

~*~

Castiel drew back the angel blade lodged in Dean’s side. Purple and red and blue oozed out, rolled thickly down his side, across Dean’s hand. He pressed it to the wound to stop the bleeding, then stilled it when he saw the iridescent colors play across his fingers. Castiel inhaled sharply. It wasn’t _wrong_ he had felt before. It was-- 

Pure Creation gushed down Dean’s flannel shirts. The taint of demons, the grace of angels, and the blood of a man, sealed together with the power of first Archangel. 

Castiel’s eyes met Dean’s. Slowly, slowly, the sheen of unreason fell away. Dean blinked his eyes and saw Castiel. Just him. Dean crushed his hand to the back of Castiel’s neck. 

A soft tugging pulled them away from each other. Castiel looked down at their feet. Where the blood splattered, green tendrils melted through the permanent white, branches crawling out of the snow.

A wild hope rose in both of their hearts. 

“We have to find Sam!” they yelled. 

Castiel strained to hear it, but a faint _pop pop pop_ drew his attention. 

The noise at their feet swelled, and Castiel reacted in an instant. He threw his arms out wide, and pulled Dean to his chest. The plates locked tight around their bodies--an armored sphere, with a tangle of limbs at its center. 

_Pop pop_ **BOOM**. 

The world split in two beneath them. 

~*~

Castiel pushed off with a swift, strong kick from his plates and--just like that--they were hurdling through the air. 

The wind ripped at them as they sailed over the tiny cabin. Castiel spared a glance with his external eyes (he was not going to tell Dean those “rivets” he had touched were actually tiny eyes). Below them, the cabin heaved in two, then ripped apart. Through the broken shards, climbing trunks and green vines pushed up out of the broken dirt. 

Something tickled against Cas’s face. 

Just to the right of Castiel’s ear, pressed close to his mouth (it wasn’t like there was an overabundance of space)--Dean laughed and laughed and laughed. 

~*~

“Sam.”

“Sam.”

“Sam!”

“SAMMY!”

Voices carried over the snowy plain. Sam roused from his stupor. He looked down at the two hundredth portal that he had checked. A snow drift had covered him up to his waist. Dean was injured. Cas was counting on him to find the way home. He had to keep moving. How long had he been here?

It didn’t matter. 

He could hear his name carried on the wind. His body shivered and protested. The last of his strength wobbled, and gave out. Sam's heart stuck is his throat. He was going to die in this goddamn snow. 

Something rose from the center of his body; familiar but not of himself. It tentatively licked over his muscles. Warmth fountained into his chest as the lethargy of hypothermia fell away. He flexed his legs and his feet. He wasn’t dead yet. No. No fucking way was he dying here. 

Sam fought and snapped and cracked the icy prison that held him. He pushed sharply away from the stone altar in front of him, not caring what his hands touched. The portal flickered wildly. Blue waves washed over the stone, and down to the ice. The magic sunk in to the snow, and the last of the frozen shards melted. _The Passage For Souls in Service of the Dead_ , he remembered through a muzzy veil. 

He was free. He turned and tried to run towards the voices--friendly voices, the voices of home, he was sure of it--but he tripped over his numb leg. 

It didn’t matter.

Sam scrambled to his feet and tried again. Sam squinted into the distance, scrunched up his nose.

He was about to call back--when his voice caught in his throat as he peered up ahead.

Wherever they were, he fiercely wished Dean and Castiel could see this. Over the horizon, Sam could see the white veil lifting; and where the snow end, a great, green tree with a metallic ball caught in its lowest branches. It looked so incongruous to the dead white plain and its rows of stone altars that he wanted to let out a great bark of laughter. It _looked_ like a bored giant had shoved a Christmas tree into the ground and could only muster the wherewithall to hang a single ornament. His ribs ached as he breathed--and he satisfied himself with a small smile. In the distance, where Sam could not see, high above the shining ornament that shook the branches after each "Sammy" was called across the plain, the top of the tree was growing; the tree carried its topmost limbs out of view into the twisting ether of the between-worlds, a realm of new Creation.

**Author's Note:**

> This story mashed together a bunch of fairy tale, folklore, and angelic lore elements together, so I thought I'd go ahead and make a running tally of them for readers who want to look up specific elements. 
> 
> **The mirror**. In "The Snow Queen," there is a magical mirror that shows everyone the exact opposite of what there is to see. Beautiful things become hideous, vibrant/alive things look dead, and everything is warped as though viewed through a funhouse mirror. This mirror eventually took to grinning at whomever looked into it, and fell prey to negative thoughts, until it actually flew out of people's hands and into the stratosphere. It broken, and shards of it went everywhere, striking people's eyes and hearts--making them empty, envious, bitter, critical, and unable to see beauty or love anywhere around them. I took this idea for the story, and wondered: what if the person could _see_ the negative, and positively embrace it without judgment. Would that break the power of the mirror?
> 
>  **Grace as the Matchsticks**. In "the Little Matchstick Girl," the eponymous character is freezing to death on the side of a London road. She has a bundle of matchsticks. She chooses to start lighting them for warmth. She only has one the bundle, and they dwindle as she continues to use them for heat. In this story, Castiel does the same thing with his grace: he breathes out a little at each time, mindful that he needs to keep the whole bundle if he and Dean are going to make it through. But then as the Little Matchstick girl lights her whole bundle, so does Castiel metaphorically light his whole damn bundle by tearing open his chest.
> 
>  **The cabin wall as the wall of dreams/projections.** When the Little Matchstick girl lights her matches, the wall in front of her becomes a window into fantastic visions. She is consoled by seeing things that she dreams of, that she wants to be a part of--things that she can't have. Cas only sees things that around him, or have already come to pass. The idea behind this is, even as Dean is freezing to death, and Cas is dripping out is last Grace, he couldn't imagine a place he would have rather ended up. Kind of sappy and horrible, if you think about it. Castiel, you seriously need to have a better life-plan at the ready.
> 
>  **The Climbing Tree as Yggdrasil/Tree of Life.** The tree that grows up at the end of the story is much like the trees in Norse mythology that pierce through the ether to bind worlds together. The one that grows is a fairly puny one, but who's to say it won't grow larger with time? :D
> 
>  **Sam as Sleeping Beauty/Character in Peril.** Even though he's the one to leave the cabin to seek a portal home for Dean  & Cas, it is Sam who ends up trapped/encased in ice. Dean and Cas don't know Sammy is in peril, but I'm guessing that Dean suspects it.
> 
>  **A frozen cabin (that's actually a project through which created beings are teaching uncreation to have desire and intent) as the Hortus conclusus.** The [hortus conclusus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortus_conclusus) (enclosed garden) is a common Medieval trope that was emblematic of the Virgin Mary. These were supposed to be enclosed, pleasant, spotless places ("a fountain sealed up") that was a place of intimate communion between mankind and spotless divinity (as figured in the Virgin Mary). So that's what it is in Medieval art. Here, it's a fairly intimate cabin, in a hurt/comfort type scenario. Man is definitely communing with the divine, here. But this is a reversal of that image. Nothing grows here. Nothing can. Not yet. Until it does, then it's wild and unrestrained. (yes, I think I just wanted to make a series of allegorical medieval sex jokes. That is seriously my bad).
> 
>  
> 
> Also, due to the nature of the narration and yours truly (whose first work of SPN fanfiction this is and only second fanfic ever), some things are probably a bit hazy
> 
>  **What the hell was going on with Dean's side?** I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this. I imagined that the Mark of Cain was reacting so strongly (it being a piece of Lucifer and all) to uncreated space, that it tried to get the hell on out of Dean's body, and it was pulling and pushing all of the different elements inside of Dean to protect itself. Basically creating a little village of demonic bits, angel grace, human soul bits, and a huge Mark Of Cain Party tent in Dean's side. Because hey it was already receiving a lot of blood  & attention with there being a stab wound there and all.


End file.
